French Cavalry tactics in the WSS

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DeanW
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French Cavalry tactics in the WSS

Post by DeanW » Wed Oct 14, 2009 4:51 pm

We have an ongoing discussion at our club regarding French Cavalry in the WSS charging on a par with British/Dutch.

Currently they are being given a 1 in 3 chance for line (more for better quality) to charge at the trot determined the first time they charge. I personally think this is excessive as I can't find a huge amount of evidence to support that they did use the same tactics as the British / Dutch.

Just wondering what others think on this topic.
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Post by hwiccee » Wed Oct 14, 2009 6:39 pm

I think that the first thing to say is that during all periods cavalry don't always do what they were supposed to do in theory. This was even more so at this time as unit commanders still had a lot of control of the tactics there unit usd, especially the French. So we are talking here about general principles but you must remember that there will be frequent exceptions.

I think that in general it was not normal for French WSS cavalry to charge at the trot like British/Dutch cavalry - although there is some evidence emerging that suggests they may have later in the war. But this does NOT mean that the French tactics were inferior to British/Dutch tactics.

French tactics generally involved a disorganised attack at the gallop, possibly preceded by a volley of fire before they start to charge but not always. This was in general terms about as effective as British/Dutch tactics, of charging at the trot but in order, of the time. But you should also remember that both kinds of tactics were generally ineffective when facing 'real' cavalry charges as practiced by later armies and some in the East.
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Post by flick40 » Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:22 pm

Armchair historian adding his 2 bits. :) The French enjoyed a reputation for having superior cavalry up until 1707ish. Individual troopers believed it and carried themselves thus. Opposing units feared it whether deserved or not. A lot to be said for the psychology of the time, the fight half won before contact being made. The cuirass, though issued, was rarely worn.

My take on it, the French tended to charge at the gallop, using speed of horse and the shock to carry the fight. The charge at the gallop isn't going to be as disorganized as one would think. It wasn't a speedy charge across an open field but a slow build-up until the reigns are let go shortly before contact. Pistols would be used to deal with fleeing enemy.

Trot or gallop, on the wargame table should it matter? Probably not.

Heres a good read on the period, though it doesnt add to your question. Amiable Renegade: The Memoirs of Captain Peter Drake 1671-1753
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Post by huevans07 » Wed Oct 14, 2009 11:25 pm

hwiccee,

This has probably been discussed a couple of times before and if so, I apologize for missing the threads. (Or forgetting them!)

But what are your sources for the French charging at the gallop? IIRC, we've had a development of theories from the "Chandler Era" walked to contact and fired pistols, to the intervening "it all depended on the situation and how the colonel had trained them" to the apparently current "charged at the gallop after firing".

I'm not trying to challenge you; just trying to keep up with the state of debate.

Also, firing pistols would not be effective at anything but point blank range. So I would suggest that fire would likely be reserved to the last second, whether galloping or not. And if galloping, that fire would probably be extremely wild and rather useless.
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Post by DeanW » Thu Oct 15, 2009 1:34 pm

Thanks for your responses.

We are going to look at ways of tweeking what we have possibly linked to the brigade commanders ability
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Cavalry Tactics during the WSS

Post by Churchill » Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:52 pm

Hello all,

I thought I would stick my oar in here as I've discussed this in the past.
The following comment comes from my learned friend Iain Stanford of the Pike & Shot society and author of "Marlborough Goes To War".

Cavalry Doctrines

The French method was to trot to about 50 yards away from the enemy, discharge pistols and charge home at the Gallop

The German method was to trot upto about 30 yards away from the enemy, discharge pistols and then close at the trot - there was less impact from the charge, but the unit tended to retain its formation.

Many Generals, including Prince Eugene preferred to charge at the gallop with sword in hand and this was practiced in the west during the WSS ... however, when facing the swifter Turkish horse, the older method was used.
Use of the Pistol was also discouraged by many generals during the WSS including Marlborough, Eugene, Villars and Vendome.

Regards...........Ray.

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Cavalry Tactics during the WSS

Post by Churchill » Thu Oct 15, 2009 10:50 pm

Hello again,

Before I take my oar back I thought I would add this to flick40's comment, sorry mate, but the bit about French cavalry enjoying a reputation for having superior cavalry up until 1707ish is wrong as the Duke of Marlborough leading his famous cavalry charge put paid to this at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704.It is also said that Tallard was taken back on witnessing the eight squadrons of Gendarmerie first recoil and then rout due to Palmes charge of five English squadrons.
If I might take a quote from Iain's book "The Gendarmerie had just recovered from driving off Rowe's assault on the village of Blenheim when Zurlauben realised that Palmes squadrons were isolated.He ordered them to charge even though they had not yet fully reformed.The eight squadrons moved off, and as they gathered speed, threatened to envelop the English horse.
As they came to within pistol shot, the Gendarmerie halted and discharged a volley.
This did little damage and only served to slow their momentum.Palmes reacted by ordering his wing squadrons to swing outwards, whereupon all five squadrons charged forward.
The result was that eight of the finest squadrons in Europe at first recoiled and then broke."
By this it seems the French were still using the old tactic of halting short and using their pistols before charging home where as the English were when charging, galloping in with sabres drawn.

Hope this helps.............Ray.

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Last edited by Churchill on Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:30 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by flick40 » Thu Oct 15, 2009 10:57 pm

I won't argue the point over a couple years time, by 1707 the French were clearly in decline across the board.
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Post by hwiccee » Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:12 am

I think that we have 2 main points here. First what the French did and secondly how effective it was compared to British/Dutch tactics.

So on the first it is important to remember that the "it all depended on the situation and how the colonel had trained them" theory and the "charged at the gallop after firing" theory are not exclusive & in fact not really that connected in many ways.

You see at this time the French, and many others, did not have an official doctrine that all units should use. It was up to the colonel to decide what to use. But this does NOT mean that there was not one or more 'usual' or 'customary' tactics that were used in 'normal' situations. The vast majority of colonel's would chose to use the 'usual' tactics. So while the French system of the time MAY have meant that there was greater variety amongst their units, although there is little evidence of that this was the case in other armies, the main tactical variants seem to be whether to include a volley in the disorganised galloping charge or not, and not some other variants.

The firing would be at close ranges but before the unit started to gallop - they would fire and then spur into the attack. This as you rightly say was not likely to be too effective and so I guess the different ideas on whether to use it or not. I would guess. for reasons I don't have time to discuss, that the fact both seemed to be used would suggest that neither was really much different to the other.

While changes in 'the situation' meant that ALL cavalry and in all periods sometimes did something different to the 'norm'. The most common form of this being the morale of the unit failing rather than some delibrate tactic.

The overwhelming evidence is that the usual French tactic was the disorganised (compared to what the Swedes were doing at the time and everyone was doing later) charge at the gallop. Unfortunately most of this evidence is not in English but as Churchill as mentioned already some is now coming in English. To be fair it is also the case that many of the newer 'English' works don't repeat Chandler's ideas ,which are clearly wrong, even if they don't set out what the French are actually doing. The key area of variation was whether to fire or not as part of this disorganised galloping charge & individual colonels/units would chose what they wanted to do, etc.

The second point is how the the British/Dutch ordered trotting tactics compared to the French disorganised galloping tactics. This is a complicated issue but we should not forget that both of these tactics were relatively ineffective and both were ditched later in the century.

I think that the key thing to decide is why the French cavalry lost in their battles against Marlborough's armies. Note here that it is not 'lost against the British/Dutch' as the French were capable of beating British/Dutch cavalry in other theatres and/or when not commanded by Marlborough. Now clearly you can take the view that the heavily outnumbered and completely outgeneralled (and often suffering some other disadvantage) French cavalry that lost against armies commanded by Marlborough did so because of the French tactics. But I think there are a lot more obvious reasons for why the cavalry lost.

If you take all of the battles of the war, rather than just the famous ones, and the circumstances that they were fought in then it is clear that victory usually went to the cavalry force that that had an easily identifible advatage - whether of numbers, generalship, etc. This and the difficultly that all sides had, even with an advantage, to actually win strongly suggests that there was very little to chose between the two. This seems to be also confirmed by later events also. So while the French cavalry were clearly superior before the WSS the big change was that the British/Dutch cavalry reached parity with the French, not that it was superior.
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Post by huevans07 » Fri Oct 16, 2009 10:15 pm

A couple of comments.

Iain, surely the larger size of the Anglo-Dutch squadrons would be counterbalanced by the larger number of French squadrons and the latter's greater maneuverability, if one assumes that the overall numbers engaged are roughly the same on both sides. And that this might actually give the French an advantage.

Nick, the French charge you describe would seem to combine the worst of all worlds - lack or control and lack of solid impact. How did the French come to adopt what is - to our way of thinking - an ineffective system?
hwiccee

Post by hwiccee » Sat Oct 17, 2009 9:53 am

The key things in a cavalry charge are speed and order. The British/Dutch tactics were better for order but the French for speed. What we think of as normal cavalry charges, as used by Swedes at the time and more generally later, had both speed and order. The Swedish style tactics were the future and not either of the British or French tactics.

On the numbers I agree with Iain but would also add that the better generalship/command of Marlborough's army meant that in many ways squadron sizes were not the full story. The Confederates often were able to mass superior concentrations in the decisive action of a battle. This is the classic Marlborough thing to do - use pinning attacks and then concentrate forces in some other place & smash through. In most of the big cavalry actions the French lost when they faced overwhelming forces assembled by Marlborough's superior command.
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Cavalry Tactics during the WSS

Post by Churchill » Sat Oct 17, 2009 10:15 am

Hi everyone,

Iain I stand corrected on this subject and you've just blown to pieces the mental picture I had in my head of Palmes charge at Blenheim.
Can I ask if you've published a 3rd edition of your book "Marlborough Goes To War" with these new findings, as I'd be interested in buying a copy.I was using the 2nd edition as my Blenheim bible so to speak and is a bit worse for wear now as I've read and used it for reference so many times.
With what you've said in your responce, Palmes charge doesn't seem so spectacular now.The Gendarmerie having first chased Rowe's brigade off, then coming under fire from the 2nd Hessian brigade which made them recoil, only to be charged by Palmes cavalry at the same time, it's no surprise they broke and given the squadron strength's you've quoted this puts it almost even with 8 squadrons of Gendarmerie = 800 against 5 squadrons of Palmes = 750.
Might I ask then that by the time of Blenheim 1704 that pistols were rarely used and that all cavalry charged in at the gallop with sabres drawn.
Where dragoons were concerned did these too use the same tactics as their line cavalry regiments e.g. Ross's brigade of 7 dragoon squadrons at Blenheim.I know the French had 12 squadrons dismounted defending the right flank of the Blenheim village.

Thank you Iain always good to hear from you.

Regards........Ray.

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Post by huevans07 » Sat Oct 17, 2009 4:18 pm

Can either Nick or Iain comment on who introduced the disordered gallop charge to the French army? Was it a Turenne era initiative?

As well, could the posters in this thread check out my query re infantry tactics from a little while back. the thread passed unnoticed and I would be grateful for any info or input from the more experienced guys in this period.

http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/fightin ... php?t=1896
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